The invention allows for persons to create a new medium called motion photos video or MPVs from photographs, video segments, personal narratives or animation by use of templates. MPVs are novel because they very quickly and inexpensively enable users to select a song and create a high-quality synchronized custom music video using their own hand-selected visual material by use of a human-generated pre-made template. These custom videos can be shared by users with friends or can be published on the Internet. Further, hey may be easily modified even after initial production because the template may travel with the viewable MPV, utilizing the source material to generate the MPV in real-time when a viewer chooses to view it. This allows modifications to occur in real-time.
Professionally produced videos require a script of what images to shoot or create. Camera crews then must acquire the footage and the resulting images are processed and modified. Artists then edit content, including when to start and end segments and how to transition between segments in order to tightly synchronize the visual aspects with the specific audio track. Though results are good, the process is expensive, time-consuming, and requires significant technical expertise to use video-editing software. The invention described herein provides a method to significantly reduce the time, cost, and complexity of creating a coherent, professional video by utilizing a pre-made template on an image capture device to guide an unsophisticated user in capturing appropriate footage for the video, and further allowing instant creation of personalized videos using the captured images or other user-selected images via placement directly in the template.
By use of the invention, users with commonly available electronics such as PCs, cameras, and camera-phones will be able to instantly or in real-time create videos that capture events, such as birthdays, vacations, and sports seasons, or moods, such as happiness of being with a friend or the feeling of missing somebody. Users can select, and possibly purchase, a popular song and have a ready-made template into which they can overlay their images for an instant finished product, creating their own customized music video. Videos can also be produced without music though we describe the rest of the invention hereafter utilizing music for clarity of the explanation.
Users are guided through the video creation process by sets of instructions and image sequences that are pre-defined by template composers. Any person can be a template composer. These instructions are invaluable to ordinary users as it allows a coherent story to be personalized with their own visuals without the tedium of defining start, stop, and transition images or going through the effort of listing out the order or flow of images to create the story. There are no existing integrated tools that assist users in identifying which images to capture or insert and that allow instant placement of these images in a human-created pre-defined template with the goal of immediate production of a finished video, customized and further modifiable by the user. Existing computer systems require users to modify nearly all aspects of a video or they provide a basic template with no synchronization defined by humans. The resulting task for the end user is either too complicated or so limiting that the user cannot modify critical aspects. Several automated tools allow for selection of images by a user that are automatically placed into a pre-defined template or a template that is not pre-defined. This invention specifically requires users to select images for placement into bins that are pre-specified, wherein selection may occur explicitly, in the course of the capture process, or by changing an order of images randomly pre-determined. A bin can be considered an object in software that corresponds to a fixed slot of time and contains or will contain objects related to a specific image, such as transition effects, text or annotated speech. These bins, and associated data about when and what occurs within the bin, allow for very tight synchronization with the audio source, as well as valuable instruction to the user who is determining which imagery to supply into the bin.
There are multiple components in the creation of an MPV: (1) template creation, (2) use of template to assist in the composition and capture of photos in real-time with the purpose of instant MPV creation using existing camera technology or modified camera hardware or software technology for the capture of images, and (3) use of a template to compose an MPV with pre-existing images with the purpose of creating an MPV. This invention focuses on the use of templates with digital camera and camera equipped devices, including software based virtual cameras designed to simulate the camera experience. In this use, one or more template software objects reside on a digital camera or camera equipped device. The user selects a template which guides the user in the composition or capture of an image for each bin in a given template. It is not required but the user may also be able to listen to the song object associated with the template to further guide composition and capture. The user may select a template that has a commercially available song associated with it and the user may choose to purchase and download the song for the photo shoot. The template allows the user to fill in each bin with one or more captured images and create an MPV. The resulting MPV may be sent to another user or another digital device such as a computer or a television.